The long-delayed movie (actually, movies, since it is planned as two films) of The Hobbit is facing more delays. At the end of May, Guillermo del Toro resigned as director, due to the delays caused by MGM’s debt problems.

Yesterday, the film news blog TheWrap reported that David Yates’s (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) says rumors that he will direct are “not true at all.”

Further, the project has not yet received the greenlight from the studio.

UPDATE: Deadline Hollywood reports that Peter Jackson, who directed Lord of the Rings, will direct.

Glenn Beck’s first thriller, The Overton Window arrives today, with some press attention.

The Washington Post, Glenn Beck’s paranoid thriller, Steven Levingston

The Huffington Post, A Conspiracy to Bore You Senseless, Simon Maloy

USA Today, Glenn Beck is in on this conspiracy, Bob Minzesheimer; about his “team approach” to writing.

The book rose to #3 on Amazon today; the audio version to #58.

The Overton Window Glenn Beck Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Threshold Editions – (2010-06-15) ISBN / EAN: 1439184305 / 9781439184301

• Available from Simon & Schuster Audio: $29.99; ISBN 9781442305243
• Large print from Center Point Platinum Mystery (Sept. 1, 2010): $35.95;

Dierdre Donahue goes after the first novel Anthropology of an American Girl in today’s USA Today, while asking why it connected with young women (as attested to by both Entertainment Weekly and the The Wall Street Journal) in its original 2003 self-published form (it’s been re-edited and re-released by Spiegel and Grau, the the boutique imprint of Random House). Donahue likens the experience of reading this book about a young woman’s coming of age, to being “trapped inside the secret diary of a super-cool narcissist with a titanium-strength ego that no plot twist can dent.”

In The Washington Post, Carolyn See was much more charitable, saying the book is a “very respectable and serious descendant of the work of D.H. Lawrence.” although she’d like it better if it were a little less serious. Nonetheless, she “finished this book with regret. Hamann has put together a carefully devised, coherent world, filled with opinions that need to be spoken — and heard.”

Several libraries own the original, 2003 edition as well as the new one. Holds are heavy (10:1) on light ordering.

Anthropology of an American Girl Hilary Thayer Hamann Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 624 pages Publisher: Spiegel & Grau – (2010-05-25) ISBN / EAN: 0385527144 / 9780385527149

Books on Tape; UNABR; 20 CDs; Narrator: Rebecca Lowman (Amer.); 9780307736321; $60
OverDrive WMA Audiobook, MP3 Audiobook and Adobe EPUB eBook

At just 25, he’s the youngest writer ever for Saturday Night Live, he already has an archive of pieces on the New Yorker Web site and has published two books of his short works. Now, Simon Rich has published a full-length novel, which was reviewed in the NYT BR (a bit lukewarmly, although the reviewer said that he’s pretty sure he’d love it if he were still in the 8th grade). Today, it gets a much stronger review in the daily NYT (featuring an author photo that makes Rich look even younger than his book’s 13-year-old protagonist).

Plus, how many authors get to shoot their book trailers on the set of SNL?

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Elliot Allagash Simon Rich Retail Price: $23.00 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-05-25) ISBN / EAN: 1400068355 / 9781400068357

Adobe EPUB eBook from OverDrive

The Boston Globe reveals a shocking secret about Boston.

They have never had a One Book program.

When questioned about the lapse, the mayor’s office replied, “There are so many different interests here that we encouraged local groups to do their own reading. The mayor doesn’t want to impose a book on people.”

It seems the mayor is not alone in his view. Says the article, “Critics argue the idea is one more example of officials intruding on people’s lives by telling them what to read, or that it’s simply trying to fill a void that doesn’t need filling.”

Boston’s not the only major city without an ongoing program; New York ran a program in 2002, but hasn’t held one since.

However, Boston will put a toe in the water during the Boston Book Festival this Fall, with a One City, One Story event. 30,000 copies of a short story by a local author (as yet unnamed) will be distributed around the city and made available online.

Alan Furst, widely acknowledged as one of the best espionage writers today, appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition today to talk about his new thriller, Spies of the Balkans (listen here). As he notes, few people have written about Greece’s role in WWII; his research proved there was a good story to tell about Balkans Greece.

Holds are growing in libraries.

Spies of the Balkans: A Novel Alan Furst Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-06-15) ISBN / EAN: 1400066034 / 9781400066032

S&S Audio; UNABR; 9781442306059; $39.99

Monday

The Colbert Report

God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World–and Why Their Differences Matter Stephen Prothero Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: HarperOne – (2010-05-01) ISBN / EAN: 006157127X / 9780061571275

The author used social media to promote his book, helping it to rise on Amazon earlier this Spring. Several libraries are showing heavy holds on light ordering.

Tuesday

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth James M. Tabor Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-06-15) ISBN / EAN: 1400067677 / 9781400067671

RH Audio; 9780307736789; $40

Random House expects this book will do as well as their 2004 best seller, Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson. Several libraries we checked have not ordered it yet.

Thursday

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Teaching the Pig to Dance: A Memoir of Growing Up and Second Chances Fred Thompson Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Crown Forum – (2010-05-18) ISBN / EAN: 0307460282 / 9780307460288

The Colbert Report

Theatre David Mamet Retail Price: $22.00 Hardcover: 176 pages Publisher: Faber & Faber – (2010-04-13) ISBN / EAN: 0865479283 / 9780865479289

After five nonfiction bestsellers, Fox News TV host Glenn Beck makes his fiction debut next week with The Overton Window, a political thriller about a conspiracy to overthrow the U.S., with holds of 3:1 at some libraries we checked.

The cryptic video trailer for the book, based on a Rudyard Kipling poem that begins with the memorable line “the dog returns to his vomit,” was released exclusively to Entertainment Weekly.

Never mind the Kipling, what does the book title mean? Politics Daily explains that the Overton Window is a concept concerning the social palatability of political ideas: “If those ideas on the very extremes of the scale become part of the public discourse, the scale shifts in their direction and ideas that were once considered ‘radical’ become ‘acceptable.’ ”

The Overton Window Glenn Beck Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Threshold Editions – (2010-06-15) ISBN / EAN: 1439184305 / 9781439184301

• Available from Simon & Schuster Audio: $29.99; ISBN 9781442305243
• Large print from Center Point Platinum Mystery (Sept. 1, 2010): $35.95; ISBN 9781602858190

Other Major Fiction On Sale Next Week

Frankenstein: Lost Souls by Dean Koontz (Bantam) picks up in hardcover where his successful paperback Frankenstein trilogy left off. Booklist says: “Koontz does his dance of grisly suspense, wry dialogue, sharp characterization, outlandish but charming (and well-integrated) comic relief, and cultural criticism more adroitly than almost ever before.”

That Perfect Someone by Johanna Lindsey (Gallery) is a Romantic Times top pick: “The Malorys are the family everyone wishes they had, so returning to their world is like entering a bit of heaven. The way Lindsey expertly writes a seductive battle-of-wills love story is magic; love, laughter, adventure and passion collide as childhood foes become lovers.”

Lowcountry Summer: A Plantation Novel by Dorothea Benton Frank (Morrow) follows the dysfunctional Southern family first introduced in Plantation.  PW raves: “Heres one for the Southern gals as well as Yankees who appreciate Franks signature mix of sass, sex, and gargantuan personalities… Below the always funny theatrics, however, is a compelling saga of loss and acceptance. When Frank nails it, she really nails it.” Click here to hear it presented at the ALA MidWinter Buzz session (and here to sign up for the Fall ’10 session at Annual).

Whiplash by Catherine Coulter (Putnam) is the author’s 14th paranormal FBI thriller. PW says that “Coulter fans will want to see more of the new crime-fighting duo” whose story dovetails with an FBI probe.

Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst (Random House) is a World War II thriller set in Greece, and was featured recently in a summer reading roundup on NPR.; he is also scheduled to appear on NPR’s Morning Edition this coming Tuesday. Kirkus says: “There’s a scattershot quality to this Balkan imbroglio that leaves it a few notches below Furst’s best work.” Holds run upwards of 2:1 at libraries we checked.

Stories: All-New Tales, ed. by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio (Morrow) is a collection of short fantasy stories by Roddy Doyle, Joyce Carol Oates, and Stuart O’Nan and Chuck Palaniuk, among others. PW says: The range of voices and subjects practically guarantees something for any reader, but the overall quality is frustratingly variable: most stories are good, some arent, and few are exceptional.”

Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis (Knopf) is the sequel to Less Than Zero.  Kirkus says: “The novel is short, elliptical and sketchy—even jumpy—but it feels like it takes forever to end. Don’t hold your breath for act three.”

The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst (Little, Brown), about a novelist whose rock star son is arrested for murder, gets a tepid review from Janet Maslin in the New York Times, who says the novel “simply has too much going on. Ms. Parkhurst becomes so involved in creating parallels and coincidences that her once-suspenseful story begins to come unstrung.”

Major Nonfiction Titles on Sale Next Week

How Did You Get This Number? by Sloane Crosley gets thumbs up from Kirkus: “Where her first collection focused on a young professional’s life in Manhattan, this follow-up finds the author—whose day job as a book publicist is rarely mentioned—taking her show on the road… Her literary gifts go well beyond easy laughs. The humor flows naturally and subtly from characters and situations, as if these were real-life short stories.”

Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth by James M. Tabor (Random House) aims to find the deepest cave system in the world. Library Journal calls it “a gripping and well-written account of the treacherous world of deep cave exploration.” The author is scheduled to appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart next week.

Uncharted Territori by Tori Spelling (Gallery) chronicles the ongoing escapades of a former 90210 star.

We’re trying to remember when publishers first used the unveiling of book covers as a promotional device. Our bet is that it started with the third volume of the Twilight saga, Eclipse. That made some sense, since the covers had achieved iconic status with fans.

It also made sense to do an unveiling of the cover of Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol, since the jacket art revealed the first bits of information about the plot.

Is there any logic behind doing the same with John Grisham’s next legal thriller, The Confession, unveiled in USA Today?  We can’t see it, but  hey, we’ve never been against promoting books, so we’ll go along with it.

The Confession John Grisham Retail Price: $28.95 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2010-10-26) ISBN / EAN: 0385528043 / 9780385528047

RH Audio; UNABR; 9780739376195; $45
RH Large Print; Trade Pbk; 9780739377895; $29

The bio of Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff coming in November caught the attention of several librarians at BEA’s Shout & Share program. It’s also caught the attention of film producer Scott Rudin, who has bought the rights to the book, reports USA Today‘s Book Buzz column.

Who will play the lead?

Rudin says he is developing it “for and with” Angelina Jolie.

Cleopatra: A Biography Stacy Schiff Retail Price: $29.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 0316001929 / 9780316001922

Hachette LARGE PRINT; Hdbk; 9780316120449; $31.99
Hachette Audio; UNABR; 9781607887010; 34.98

Barbara Kingsolver won the UK’s Orange Prize in a ceremony last night in London’s Royal Festival Hall for her novel The Lacuna.

The annual prize is awarded to a woman author, from any country, for a novel written in English. The prize was established in 1996 in reaction to the 1991 all-male Booker short list and is funded by Orange, a UK mobile phone and internet service company.

The UK’s Guardian calls The Lacuna,

…arguably the most demanding of the six books on the shortlist. It’s a doorstopping novel that needs to be read properly rather than in snatches and tackles big subjects that resonate today – not least, the media creation of, and obsession with, celebrity.

and said it held off “heavyweight competition” from Hilary Mantel’s Booker-winning Wolf Hall and Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs.

Of the other books on the short list, Rosie Alison’s The Very Thought of You (not published in the US) is called a “the curve ball” by committee chair Daisy Goodwin, because it is “an old-fashioned romance…which had not even been reviewed by a national paper.” As the Guardian points out, however, it has not suffered from the lack of reviews and was selling well in the UK before the announcement.

The Guardian noted surprise at “the inclusion of a thriller,” Black Water Rising by American author Attica Locke as well as the “page-turningly enjoyable” The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey (not published in the US).

The prize gave a boost to The Lacuna which rose to #7 on Amazon’s sales ranking in the UK , as well as to most of the short list titles (Wolf Hall, now in paperback in the UK, was already in the top 10):

#12 (from #23) The Very Thought of You, Rosie Alison

#22 (from #49) The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, Monique Roffey

#81 (from #276) A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore

#105  (from #852) Black Water Rising, Attica Locke

In the U.S. none of the titles available here has cracked the Amazon top 100 since the announcement; Lacuna, which was a best seller here after it was published last year, rose to #286 from #514 yesterday.

Which titles will be book club favorites when they come out in trade paperback next year? Kaite Stover asked this question in her Booklist Book Group Buzz column recently, placing her bets on two current hardcovers, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by Helen Simondson (Random House, March, 2010) Bloodroot by Amy Greene (Knopf, Jan, 2010) and one that isn’t coming out until January, Pictures of You by Caroline Leavitt (Algonquin).

We love the idea of making these predictions, and wanted to join in. Our pick is Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Back in January, USA Today made this attention-getting comparison,

Readers entranced by Kathryn Stockett’s The Help…will be equally riveted by Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s Wench, a brutally told fictional account of slave women forced to be the “mistresses” of their white masters in the years leading up to the Civil War.

Like The Help, Wench immerses readers in its characters’ complex emotional lives.

For some reason, it didn’t follow The Help to bestsellerdom, but we’re predicting it will when it comes out in trade paperback this January. There’s several good indicators, including heavy holds in libraries. Book clubs are already reading it and Dolen-Perkins is available for phone-ins with groups via Skype (for more, check here). There’s even a reading group guide on O, the Oprah magazine site.

Wench: A Novel Dolen Perkins-Valdez Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Amistad – (2010-01-01) ISBN / EAN: 006170654X / 9780061706547

Unabridged Audio: Books on Tape
Audio and eBook downloadable from OverDrive
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Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s tour schedule is peppered with library events, including several opportunites to see her at the upcoming ALA:

Sunday, June 27th, WCC, 142
1:30-3:30
ALTAFF Program: Authors Come in All Colors

8:00 – 10:00
BCALA Membership Meeting

Monday, June 28
11:00-12:00
Booth signing — HarperCollins booth, #2513

12:00-12:30
Dolen Perkins-Valdez at the LIVE Stage